Experiance of Death
by ChishioShakun
Summary: Two years is a relatively short time to be dead in the grand scheme of the universe but it is enough to experience. Collection of one-shots and poems chronicling Shepard's death.


This is portraying Shepard's (f) death after the Normandy was destroyed at the beginning of ME2. There are religious references and they are in no way meant to be insulting or patronizing. If it reads that way I apologize now.

This is written to reflect Shepard's thoughts/feelings/being AFTER her death, so it is intentionally jumbled and maybe slightly confusing. Many have written about her death and about her resurrection, but none that I have found show while she is dead. My goal was to relate this information.

This is a oneshot, which I may follow up with other oneshots and poems.

Bioware owns all rights to the characters and game. This is a fan creation and no money is being made from it.

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Death wasn't supposed to be an eternal expanse of nothing. It wasn't supposed to be empty and cold like the vacuum that had siphoned all her precious air away. It wasn't supposed to be dark.

All her life she had believed that there would be something after. She had been told over and over that after she inhaled her last breath there would be paradise and light. That there would be others to welcome her, that she would be safe and loved. It never gave her comfort that way those on earth, who clung to the wooden crosses and their prayers as the world crumbled around them, received comfort. She had always been just a little above thinking that there was some almighty god who would welcome her to his kingdom, but there had been a small part of her that had hoped. That had hoped that the end wasn't the end, but a step toward something more. That it would be warm and safe, like being wrapped in your favorite blanket or the protective arms of a loved one. Silly now, these hopes were when there was only cold darkness around her.

The pessimist in her laughed and said this had to be hell or purgatory. A thousand years she would be condemned to this, this barren darkness. The optimist had run at the faint hiss of air escaping into nothingness and the heat, the last heat she would ever feel at her back. Traitor she had called out in her mind as she frantically tried to find the leak. Traitor. In the emptiness the word hung nearly visible, leaving a bad taste in her mouth. Things twisted in the cold around her, through her, in her? There was no her anymore least nothing that could be identified and labeled.

She wasn't religious, despite her adopted family's best efforts. She had seen too much death, too much at too young an age to really truly believe on faith alone. If she had to choose one thing that she could have believed, could believe, it would have to be the spirits that one….that one…that…someone she had known spoke about. It wasn't like a ghost or something divine but the soul of a group, a place, a ship. A beautiful ship, a courageous ship, hers.

Things slipped away silently from her in the darkness like they were afraid to tell her goodbye. What she was called could no longer be remembered, places faded, items were no more. Faces, the faces lasted longer than the names.

The shine of some sort of helmet; illuminated eyes smiled behind the purple tint with warmth. Then there was red and pale, a face cut in half by the colors, scars through both halves, battle lust and mirth dancing in red eyes. More passed until the connection to the faces couldn't stay; it left along with the sensation of wholeness.

Only one face was left, blurring at the edges, crumbling before her, or maybe she was crumbling? The face was angler, sharp, felt like it could cut through this, this smothering blanket of black. If only the name could be remembered. She didn't mind getting cut up if only something was solid in the darkness. If only she could have the protective blanket she had been promised for so many years.

It should have been peaceful. Should have calmed her to know this was the end. No more would she be needed to do whatever it was she had been doing. No more. But it just sent blank waves of panic through, through what? Her soul? Mind? Body, if she had ever had one to being with?

Thoughts were tatters; feelings sparse and few between. Maybe there was a ghost ship to pick her up. She would serve. Maybe this was the end that awaited sailors of the seas. Maybe. Maybe. What? She hated this disconnected feeling. The problem couldn't be found and ignored when it couldn't be found in the first place.

Maybe. Traitor. You ran away. That's why there is nothing. You left your post, your appointed place. You are now a fallen angel to be bathed in darkness. The nothingness screams in perfect unbroken silence. She tried to tell it to shut up but you can't talk to nothing, it has no ears.

So she drifted. Waiting. Waiting for what she didn't know, she knew nothing anymore. But in the darkness, the emptiness, in her, around her, there was something. A feeling, vague and scattered, that sharpened the last face briefly. Maybe the pessimist was right.


End file.
